Technology Trader

Solving Alibaba's Riddle—and What's Yahoo's Next Act?

Alibaba's IPO prospectus raises as many questions as it answers.

Questions, questions, flood the mind when contemplating the filing last week for the initial public offering of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding. Some were simple, some deep, but the nearly 250-page prospectus raised as many as it answered after years of speculation about an offering.

Alibaba acts as a hybrid between eBay (ticker: EBAY) and Amazon.com (AMZN), holding no inventory and operating no warehouses. Like eBay,...